by Seth Smith
The story of American Catholicism in the years immediately preceding and following the Second Vatican Council is a familiar one. The triumphal “Catholic ghetto” – a network of schools, hospitals, and social organizations that existed parallel to public institutions – that typified the American Church prior to World War II began to show cracks during the postwar era before crumbing under the weight of Vatican II reforms. Although this story largely rings true in Catholic strongholds in the Northeast and Midwest, it never fit the South, especially the rural South. Catholics made up less than 3 percent of the entire population there. Most areas housed no Catholic schools, hospitals, or benevolent organizations. There were few parishes and fewer priests. Consequently, “Catholic culture” did not exist in the South, certainly not as experienced in the Midwest or Northeast. Instead, Southern Catholics lived in the “Bible Belt,” an area saturated with evangelical Protestant culture. Catholics here were regarded with a suspicion, if not outright hostility, by their Southern neighbors which meant that they, unlike their Northern brethren, had to make the regular, conscious choice to be Catholic. There was no such thing as a “cultural Catholic.” One either was or was not a Catholic; the antagonism engendered by identifying oneself as Catholic was not worth the effort if not invested in faith.
The Glenmary Home Missioners offer an excellent avenue for studying the unique features of the rural Southern Church. Father Howard Bishop, founder of Glenmary in 1939, described the region as “No Priest Land, USA.” He feared that this vast, priestless “home mission” area would be lost to the Catholic Church unless it was recognized and designated a specific ministry of the Church. Glenmary missionaries ministered to the rural and small town areas of the South and Appalachia, spanning a territory from Virginia to Texas. In addition to miniscule Catholic populations, Glenmary territories often endured poverty levels that were twice the national average. Therefore, much of the community’s ministry became ecumenically oriented by necessity and was performed without regard to race, religion or economic condition.
My research examines the Glenmary Home Missioners from their foundation in 1939 until 1990, a period spanning roughly twenty five years pre- and post-Vatican II. This should give an adequate idea of Glenmary’s place in the American Church throughout the twentieth century. I intend to follow three Glenmary parishes from different regions (Appalachia, the Deep South, Texas/Oklahoma) through the period, exploring the ways in which immediate parish and pastoral concerns “on the ground” shaped their approach to theological issues. In order to demonstrate what was unique to Glenmary parishes and what was universal to rural Southern parishes, I will compare them to broad themes in secondary literature and three diocesan parishes roughly analogous in terms of size and socio-economic make up in the same dioceses.
The purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to address the question of how priests and lay Catholics in these parishes engaged pluralistic American society before and after Vatican II. The second purpose is to examine what it meant to be part of the universal Catholic Church when one was largely isolated from the Catholic Church institutionally and socially. Entwined in these larger topics are a number of issues crucial to American Catholicism that Glenmary missions had to address, often well in advance of much of the rest of the country: lack of religious (priests and nuns), increased lay involvement, the proper role of women, a growing number of religious intermarriages, financial problems, race relations, breakdowns in institutional support, and ecumenism.
My early research indicates that local realities often trumped official Church pronouncements. Southern Catholics coped with their situation in two ways: informal ecumenism and clinging to the facets of their faith that were unique. The ecumenism was a practical way of surviving while vastly outnumbered; it manifested itself in helping a neighbor put up a tool shed or contributing to the library bake sale instead of theological discourse. The promulgation of Unitatis Redintegratio in 1964 only codified what Southern Catholics already lived. The uniqueness of the Church gave these Catholics their identity. Liturgy, sacred space, and relationship with the priest marked one as Catholic in the rural South in a way that culture did not. These facets of the faith were, of course, important to Catholics around the country. But to Catholics in the Northeast and Midwest they were not the only features of the Church – the most important, perhaps – but not necessarily the most prominent. To Southern Catholics these facets defined their faith. The story that emerges from their experience is the story of American Catholicism without a ghetto.